Jealousy
by Fugitive
Summary: [Don't look at me like that.] One-shot.


He despised Snow the second he met him.

Snow was strong, tall, and handsome with a swagger to match his out-of-control ego. There had been men in his village just like him, before the plague took them all. They could strangle a monster with one hand and lift a boulder with the other, and the girls always batted their eyes at them. Noel wasn't like them. That was why Noel spent most of his time with Yeul, apart from being her protector, of course. Even though she was more of an annoying younger sibling than a friend, she didn't mind that he was more brains than brawn, or that he couldn't grow a beard, hard as he tried. She liked him just fine.

Noel had loved Yeul like she was his own sister, but with Serah it was different. It had always been different, and though he could never put his finger on it before, the message was loud and clear today.

Noel didn't quite understand at first what Serah wanted or what was going on between them, if anything was. But he thought of the way Serah would lace her fingers with his inside the Historia Crux, her midnight giggles as they told each other stories of home, the warmth of her body as she snuggled into their usual back-to-back sleeping position (strangely the best part of his day), and her wispy hair and her bright eyes and her smile and he loved her and he was pissed and hurt and he hated that he was feeling like this at all.

Her ever-present engagement pendant was always just part of her outfit to him, nothing special, and her drawn-out Snow monologues he had taken with a grain of salt and brushed off carelessly. There were more important things to worry about. But on this awful day at Sunleth Waterscape, the way her eyes lit up and the way she wrapped herself around her long-lost fiancé left him feeling like Snow had punched him in the gut.

Why should Snow get to be the hero and get the girl? He'd been gone and left her alone for years. He hadn't been the one to drag a poisoned Serah from the Wyvern's nest, hadn't fed her every night or kept watch while she slept. Noel was seething inside. The worst part was that Noel knew, deep down, that she was never his to protect. She had already given herself to Snow a long time ago, hadn't she? But back then she wasn't the Serah he knew today.

Noel had seen the anguished look on Serah's face when Snow unkindly brushed off discussion of their postponed marriage. Their engagement be damned; he wanted to punch Snow's lights out, pull Serah and himself back into the Historia Crux, and shake her till she came back to her senses. Noel had lashed out verbally at Snow while Serah looked on apologetically, almost guiltily. _That_ had pissed him off more than anything. _Don't look at me like that. _

* * *

Later that evening, after Snow had disappeared and Serah had a good cry, they set up camp in a small grove out of reach of the flan. Noel silently skinned the birds he had caught and slid them onto the spit.

"Noel?"

He didn't move, but his eyes drifted over toward her. She was gazing into the embers with still-puffy eyes. "Mmm?"

"I'm sorry."

He wiped his hands on the grass and started cleaning his blade. "Sorry about what?"

"About today."

"What about?"

She didn't answer. They ate their meal together in silence. Noel could feel her eyes on him, questioning, wanting, needing him to acknowledge her, but he stubbornly refused to glance up. When he was finished he took a swig of water from the skin and pulled out his blanket. "We've got to get an early start tomorrow morning. It took us way too long to find the artefacts in this world, but now that -"

"NOEL," Serah whispered pleadingly. "I-"

"Look," said Noel evenly. "The faster we do this, the sooner we can get you reunited with your sister and your fiancé, permanently. Isn't that what you want? Isn't that why we're doing this?"

"Noel—"

He laid down on the ground, threw a blanket over himself, and turned away. He sensed her hand about to touch his shoulder and he stiffened. After a while, Noel heard a sniffle and a rustling of bedding as Serah got her blanket out too.

He didn't feel her back against his that night, or the next one, or the ones following.


End file.
